I was alone but not looking for company

Yet you were generous and asked:

“Haven’t you got any friends here?”

I said, everyone is my friend and

You understood I have no friends

“If you got no one you can join me anytime for tea”

I know you’re sympathetic but expected you

To ask again the next day, which you didn’t.

Did you see into the future and saw

What a cup of tea can do?

Bringing us close only to make us strangers ultimately

After shaking us to the core causing us to

Look at the “you can join me anytime for tea” moment

With nothing but terror and mortal fear.

Well you don’t invite a tiger for tea and

Neither does a tiger wag its tail like a dog.

Did you see into the future we both exposing

Each other to the darkest recesses of our mind?

Or did you realise that the tea we may sip is just

A prelude to sipping each other’s peace and sanity?

Did you foresee that there is just a fine line separating

Pleasure and suffering, love and hatred, comfort and danger?

After all, it seems you understood that our paths had crossed,

Just crossed and not for any reason which only fools imagine.

Thanks for not asking again, I also didn’t want it

We never fell in love and so we were

Spared of each other’s tenebrosity.

But every time this herbivorous tiger sees you,

It smells blood and yearns for the sweet taste of your heart

Isn’t peace anathema to war and warmongers?

Only idiots say better safe than sorry

For real glory lies in getting bruised and battered.

Aren’t we destined to be the two mythical serpents

Swallowing each other? Tail first, slowly and slowly.

Until we realise that the very act of self-redemption

Is possible only when the other is annihilated.

“I have always fantasized to skin a ferocious tiger live”

Wait a minute, who is speaking? Am I hallucinating?

“Hey, do you like to join me for a tea?”

Steam from the two cups of tea intertwined as it rose above.